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To cope with his dread, John Kitzhaber opened his leather-bound journal and began to write.
It was a little past 9 on the morning of Nov. 22, 2011. Gary Haugen had dropped his appeals. A Marion County judge had signed the murderer's death warrant, leaving Kitzhaber, a former emergency room doctor, to decide Haugen's fate. The 49-year-old would soon die by lethal injection if the governor didn't intervene.
Kitzhaber was exhausted, having been unable to sleep the night before, but he needed to call the families of Haugen's victims.
"I know my decision will delay the closure they need and deserve," he wrote.
The son of University of Oregon English professors, Kitzhaber began writing each day in his journal in the early 1970s. The practice helped him organize his thoughts and, on that particular morning, gather his courage.
Kitzhaber first dialed the widow of David Polin, an inmate Haugen beat and stabbed to death in 2003 while already serving a life sentence fo…

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Indonesia strives to avoid media frenzy over drug executions

While Indonesia prepares to execute 15 prisoners convicted of drug offences, it seems the government is keen to avoid the media attention that surrounded executions last year. 5 Indonesians, 1 Pakistani, 4 Chinese, 2 Senegalese, 2 Nigerians and 1 Zimbabwean are due to face a firing squad this month, according to local media.

Speaking to Southeast Asia Globe, Indonesian lawyer Ricky Gunawan, who represented one of the convicts executed last year, said the death sentences were likely to be carried out soon.

"Lots of government officials have said that they want to avoid the hysteria and media frenzy and spotlight on Indonesia," Gunawan added.

Indonesia's chief security minister, Luhut Pandjaitan, appeared to confirm this when he recently told journalists that "the executions can take place any time, but there will not be a 'soap opera' about it this time".

14 prisoners were executed in 2015, all but 2 of them foreign nationals. They included Australian citizens Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, members of the so-called Bali 9, and Brazilian Rodrigo Gularte. Philippine national Mary Jane Veloso was given a last-minute reprieve but remains on death row. All these cases were followed closely in their home countries and further afield. Notably, of this year's batch of 10 foreigners, 7 are from countries that also employ the death penalty.

Last week, the Anti-Death Penalty Civil Society Coalition, a group of 16 Indonesian NGOs, held a press conference to decry the executions, saying they were not the solution to address drug crime in their country.

The head of the Indonesian Drug Victim Advocacy Brotherhood (PKNI), Totok Yulianto, said the number of drug convicts has been rising, despite two rounds of executions last year. 6 people were executed in January and 8 more in April 2015.

According to PKNI, nearly 62,000 prisoners were incarcerated for drug-related crimes in October 2014, and by February this year the number stood at 69,662. This meant that almost 40% of all prisoners were in jail for narcotics offences.

"Even though the government had carried out executions in January and April. This shows that the death penalty does not create a deterrent effect. This is data from the directorate general of corrections," the Jakarta Post reported Yulianto as saying last week.

In April, the UN's General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on the global drug problem. Indonesia delivered a statement in defence of retaining the death penalty, on behalf of a coalition comprising China, Singapore and Malaysia, among others.

A statement released by PKNI on Monday said that the lack of fair trials in Indonesia is another reason why the use of death penalty should be reviewed. They pointed to the use of torture to extract confessions and a lack of adequate legal representation for those without the resources.

Source: Southeast Asia Globe, May 18, 2016

A year on, Indonesia gears up for executions again

Only a year after the execution of Australians Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan, Indonesia is gearing up for another round of executions. Determined to keep it low profile, Indonesian authorities are remaining tight-lipped about the condemned.

If Indonesia has learnt anything from the diplomatic fiasco ignited by last year's execution of 14 death-row inmates, it seems to be this: if you're going to kill drug offenders, and particularly foreign nationals, keep it low profile. Or better still, assemble a line-up from countries that are less likely to remonstrate. Not the lesson, perhaps, that the international community might have hoped for.

As Indonesia gears up for another round of executions, it's becoming depressingly clear that after the intense media coverage of 2015 - the political posturing, the desperate pleas and impassioned headlines - this year's condemned will go to their deaths in the forests of central Java with barely a murmur of protest. The final wishes of executed Australians Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan - for an end to the death penalty - will not be granted. Or not yet.

Indonesian lawmakers are remaining tight-lipped about the condemned - who they are, and how many - but there are rumoured to be up to 15 drug offenders, largely non-Western foreign nationals of retentionist countries, who could be executed as early as this week. "There is only the choosing of the specific date. That's what I haven't been able to decide," announced Attorney-General H.M. Prasetyo, as though pondering when to hold a luncheon rather than when he will usher the next desperate band of convicts onto the killing fields of Nusakambangan.

If the public pronouncements from senior figures are distasteful, though - desultory remarks about sprucing up the execution site, drilling the shooters, or preparing facilities to accommodate the bodies of the not-yet-dead - that's not exactly unique to Indonesia. The recent debate in Virginia on the merits of the lethal injection cocktail versus 1800 volts of electricity reminds us that there's no nice way to talk about state-sanctioned murder.

Authorities are resolved to avoid any "drama" this time around, as though the macabre theatre of last year - the armoured Barracuda carriers and brigades of masked security personnel - was not scripted by Indonesia itself. "There won't be a soap opera like the last time", according to Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs Luhut Panjaitan "because I think that wasn't pretty". No indeed.

Of course, the less said about these executions, the harder it is to scrutinise the mechanics of Indonesia's capital punishment apparatus or the narratives of those that are caught within it. Like Zulfiqar Ali, for instance, sentenced to death for possession of 300g heroin: except that Ali wasn't in possession of the drug at all, and the individual who was - and who fingered Ali as his supplier - has since retracted his testimony.

This bleak situation may not come as any surprise to legal experts or anyone else who witnessed, with dismay and disbelief, the events of 2015. Young Filipina Mary Jane Veloso came within minutes of an encounter with the firing squad before new evidence - suggesting Veloso wasn't, in fact, a drug trafficker but a trafficked person - was finally conceded. And in this, too, Indonesia is not alone.

Research from the United States reveals that, conservatively, about 4 % of those sentenced to death are innocent. That's around 8000 men and women in the US that have been placed, falsely, on death row since the 1970s - and only a fraction of these will ever be exonerated. The rash of forced confessions that undermines the integrity of capital sentencing in Indonesia appears to be part of an epidemic that spans the Middle East and even the United States. The death penalty, it turns out, is not the ultimate way for the community to mete out justice, but injustice.

In some respects, the tide is turning. In April, an Indonesian delegate at the United Nations general assembly special session on drugs was booed for defending the use of the death penalty for drug crime - and there's no doubt its use in this context is deeply troubling. But it's not clear why such public demonstrations of scorn are reserved for Indonesia alone, and why the conversation around capital punishment is perennially hijacked by a focus on the crime, rather than the punishment. The number of offenders allegedly on Indonesia's hit list is almost identical to the number put to death in the United States this year so far; similar to that executed by state of Texas in 2015 alone.

Whether or not the death penalty should be applied to drug crime or only reserved for more serious crimes like murder is missing the point. Worse, this type of thinking lures us into a dangerous moral calculus that leaves us at the mercy of our greatest fears and our deepest prejudice: terrorism but never murder; murder but never drugs; drugs but never apostasy. Because here's the thing - the fatal flaws in the death penalty are the same regardless of crime.

The question of who is sentenced to death and who is ultimately executed - and when - has nothing to do with judicial impartiality and, in some cases, precious little even to do with the penal code. The lottery of a system that can arbitrarily hand death to one individual and a 10-year sentence to another for the same crime is chilling, as is the unnerving correlation between politics and executions - evident from Iran, to Indonesia, to the cynical timing of Afghanistan's executions of Taliban prisoners a fortnight ago. Research on US state elections reveal an even more dismal statistic: executions are 25 percent more likely in election years than other years, and elections increase this risk by an even larger amount if the defendant is African-American. God bless America.

Capital punishment - no matter where or how it's used - targets the disadvantaged with a savage specificity. The key predictors of a death sentence in the US are not the severity of the crime but victim race and geography, and in the same way that capital punishment takes aim at blacks and Hispanics in the US, in Asia it is largely reserved for 'the poor, and the poorly connected'. Corruption may be rife in many Asian judicial systems - prompting some academics to tacitly advocate the bribery of public officials - but in the US, too, capital sentences are simply not handed to those that can afford good legal representation, according to Supreme Court justices. Indeed, the litany of incompetence, including unethical and even criminal conduct, from attorneys in capital cases is no less stunning in Dallas than it is in Denpasar.

And if that's so, what difference does it make whether a death sentence is handed to a drug smuggler in Bali or a murderer in Oklahoma? It's time we realised there's no such thing as a justice system that's infallible, and dispensed with the collective delusion that a death sentence - in Texas or Tehran or Tangerang - is reserved for those most deserving of this ultimate measure of justice. And while we're at it, it's time we abandoned the notion that capital punishment has anything to do with justice in the first place.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald, Commentary, May 18, 2016. Sarah Gill is an Age columnist who has worked as a writer and a policy analyst. She is undertaking postgraduate legal studies at the University of Western Australia.

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Organizers of an anti-death penalty coalition say they have delivered over 56,000 petition signatures to New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, urging him to sign a bill to repeal the state’s capital punishment law.
Sununu has vowed to veto the bill, saying he stands with crime victims and members of the law enforcement community.
Before presenting the signatures, the New Hampshire Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty held a news conference Thursday where family members of murder victims spoke in favor of repealing the death penalty.
The bill was passed by the House and Senate.
It is unclear whether they have a two-thirds majority of votes in both chambers, which is needed to override vetoes. Source: The Associated Press, May 17, 2018

⚑ | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.

The high school junior accused of gunning down 10 students and teachers at a Santa Fe school is facing a capital murder charge - but he’ll never face the death penalty, even in Texas.
Though Dimitrios Pagourtzis was charged as an adult and jailed without bond, even if he’s found guilty he can’t be sentenced to death because of a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. And in the Lone Star State, he can’t be sentenced to life without parole as the result of a 2013 law that banned the practice for minors.
“In Texas, after the Supreme Court’s decision, they passed a law that basically says that it’s a life sentence if you’re under 18 at the time of the crime,” said attorney Amanda Marzullo, executive director of Texas Defender Services. “The Court has said that it is cruel and unusual to execute an individual who is under 18 at the time of the offense.”
The Santa Fe High School student admitted to the mass shooting that killed 10 and wounded 10 others early Friday, according to court documents.…

31 years ago, on May 20, 1987, just before midnight, I was sitting in the witness area of the Mississippi Gas Chamber watching someone die in front of me. His name was Edward Earl Johnson.
I am both sad and glad that Edward’s final two weeks, right up to his agonising death, were recorded in Paul Hamann’s extraordinary BBC documentary Fourteen Days in May. Sad, because from time to time I find myself forced to relive that horror, when I watch the film at some public event; glad, because at least Edward’s senseless death has had positive repercussions – the film inspiring many to take up the battle for people in his precarious predicament.
Yet it irks me beyond measure that people who should know better use their position of power to prognosticate that the justice system never executes the innocent. For example, in a case called Kansas v. March, in 2006, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia loudly proclaimed that there is not “a single case — not one — in which it is clear that a…

How much does the public have a right to know about how the state of Indiana executes people?
It is a question that, effectively, strikes at the heart of capital punishment. And it's the issue in a 4-year-old case in Marion Circuit Court that started with a public records request by Washington attorney A. Katherine Toomey to the Indiana Department of Corrections (DOC).
"If we win ... the Indiana public will know more about one of the most consequential areas of decision making that the state of Indiana engages in," attorney Peter Racher said in an interview.
The state, however, sees it as contrary to a state law limiting what the public can see pertaining to executions. The law was controversial because of how it passed. After midnight on the final day of the 2017 legislative session, it was added to a budget bill, two pages out of 175.
"The budget is now a death penalty bill," Rep. Matt Pierce, D-Bloomington, said at the time. "There's been no public…

The lawyers fighting the death penalty ordered for a former Northmont High School student want the Ohio Supreme Court to reconsider its affirmation of the sentence and scheduling of the execution.
Austin Myers' lawyers said in a motion filed this morning that they want the state's highest court to overturn the conviction and call a new trial "or in the alternative that his sentence be modified to life without parole."
Myers, 23, is still apparently the 2nd youngest on Ohio's death row 3 1/2 years after being sentenced for the murder of childhood friend Justin Back, 18, of Wayne Twp., Warren County.
Last Thursday, the court affirmed the death penalty for Myers, for the stabbing death of Back at his home outside Waynesville in January 2014.
The execution was scheduled for July 20, 2022 in the decision.
Warren County prosecutor David Fornshell was pleased with the 7-0 ruling by the state's highest court.
"The 7-0 decision is always something you like to se…

Defendant claims firefighters didn't try hard enough to extinguish blaze
The nanny responsible for killing 4 members of a family in an arson appeared in court in eastern China on Thursday to appeal her death sentence.
Mo Huanjing, nanny of the family of Lin Shengbin, pleaded guilty to starting the fire. But she said during the appeal at Zhejiang High People's Court that "the penalty in the original ruling was extremely heavy".
"The tragedy wasn't the result I wanted to see," she added. She said the efforts of firefighters were flawed. And she confessed to her offense during the initial interrogation, which could be regarded as a reason to earn a more lenient sentence.
Wu Pengbin, her lawyer, told China Daily that some firefighters and employees of the property management department of Lin's apartment attended the hearing as witnesses at his urging.
"I wanted them to show what they were doing at the time to the court, as I, with my client, thoug…

To cope with his dread, John Kitzhaber opened his leather-bound journal and began to write.
It was a little past 9 on the morning of Nov. 22, 2011. Gary Haugen had dropped his appeals. A Marion County judge had signed the murderer's death warrant, leaving Kitzhaber, a former emergency room doctor, to decide Haugen's fate. The 49-year-old would soon die by lethal injection if the governor didn't intervene.
Kitzhaber was exhausted, having been unable to sleep the night before, but he needed to call the families of Haugen's victims.
"I know my decision will delay the closure they need and deserve," he wrote.
The son of University of Oregon English professors, Kitzhaber began writing each day in his journal in the early 1970s. The practice helped him organize his thoughts and, on that particular morning, gather his courage.
Kitzhaber first dialed the widow of David Polin, an inmate Haugen beat and stabbed to death in 2003 while already serving a life sentence fo…

(CNN) - An Australian woman has been sentenced to death by hanging after a Malaysian court overturned an earlier acquittal of drug smuggling charges.
According to CNN affiliate Sky News, a three-judge panel unanimously threw out the previous ruling in 54-year-old Maria Elvira Pinto Exposto's case.
The grandmother and mother of four was arrested in December 2014 while transiting through the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur on a flight from Shanghai to Melbourne, according to another CNN affiliate, SBS News.
She was found in possession of 1.1 kilos (2.4 lb) of crystal methamphetamine and faced a mandatory death penalty under Malaysia's draconian drugs laws.
Exposto claimed she had no knowledge of the drugs in her bag and had been scammed by a boyfriend she met online.
According to SBS, Exposto's lawyers said she had gone to Shanghai to file documents in relation to her boyfriend's retirement from service in the US army. When she left China, Exposto claimed she was handed …

Concerns about Texas' dwindling lethal injection supplies coupled with questions about the age of the drugs have some advocates wondering whether the state is prepared to humanely carry out its recent uptick in scheduled executions.
Texas currently has 8 death dates and 9 doses of its execution drug - compounded sodium pentobarbital - for use in the Huntsville death chamber. What's more, a string of contradictory records from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice raises questions about whether some of those doses could be 3 years old, far older than previously reported and old enough that experts worry it could increase the chances of a "torturous" execution.
"The older the drug the greater the likelihood of a botched execution. Period," said Maurie Levin, a death penalty lawyer with experience in lethal injection litigation. "It becomes contaminated, corrupted, impotent, and all of those things can lead to a torturous execution."
In response …

Texas executed Juan Castillo, who said he was innocent, for 2003 San Antonio murder
A Texas death row inmate was executed Wednesday — his 4th execution date in a year. Though advocates and his attorneys insisted on Juan Castillo's innocence, he lost all his fights in court and was put to death for a 2003 San Antonio murder.
Juan Castillo was put to death Wednesday evening, ending his death sentence on his 4th execution date within the year.
The 37-year-old was executed for the 2003 robbery and murder of Tommy Garcia Jr. in San Antonio.
The execution had been postponed three times since last May, including a rescheduling because of Hurricane Harvey.
Castillo's advocates and attorneys had insisted on his innocence in Garcia’s murder, pleading unsuccessfully for a last-minute 30-day stay of execution from Republican Gov. Greg Abbott after all of his appeals were rejected in the courts.
The Texas Defender Service, a capital defense group who had recently picked up Castillo’s cas…

DPN opposes the death penalty in all cases, unconditionally, regardless of the method chosen to kill the condemned prisoner. The death penalty is inherently cruel and degrading, an archaic punishment that is incompatible with human dignity. To end the death penalty is to abandon a destructive diversionary and divisive public policy that is not consistent with widely held values. The death penalty not only runs the risk of irrevocable error, it is also costly to the public purse as well as in social and psychological terms.The death penalty has not been proved to have a special deterrent effect. It tends to be applied in a discriminatory way on grounds of race and class. It denies the possibility of reconciliation and rehabilitation. It prolongs the suffering of the murder victim's family and extends that suffering to the loved ones of the condemned prisoner. It diverts resources that could be better used to work against violent crime and assist those affected by it. Death Penalty News is a privately owned, non-profit organization. It is based in Paris, France.Your donations to Death Penalty News DO make a difference.